


Won't you let me have a taste?

by Baryshnikov



Series: Crossing the red-stained veil [10]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cannibalism Play, Cannibalistic Fantasy, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Dark Harry Potter, Eating, Inspired by Hannibal, Love, M/M, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Sexual Tension, hunger, what is love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24381370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom's not entirely sure that this is love anymore, but that's not going to stop him.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Series: Crossing the red-stained veil [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1520894
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63
Collections: Read





	Won't you let me have a taste?

**Author's Note:**

> It's late, I'm tired, I'm stressed and this is just sick; I'm so sorry for writing it.

Tom stabbed at a piece of meat, pushing his fork in deep enough that it hit the plate below and a thin spread of blood oozed from the flesh. Red staining the white of the plate, just as the cold blisters pale skin; the meat was rare--the very borderline of edibility.

The very closest that one could get to eating something that was still squirming, or _someone_.

Tom paused, the piece of meat stuck to his fork, still dripping, and glanced up at his fining companion. Across the table, separated by a couple of feet of wood and a fine spread of dishes, each of them pushing the limits of decency further from mortal reach, sat Harry.

His own plate was practically untouched, and there was a sneer of contempt affecting the corner of his mouth. For where Tom looked at the meat of an animal scarcely dead and saw the freshness as something divine, Harry looked upon the same creature and saw only fresh suffering.

It was sweet--innocent, really--and exceptionally hypocritical given the things Tom had watched him do. The actions that Tom had stood by and observed as he completed; there was a monster made in his image inside Harry Potter and with a little leverage, Tom could make it come out. Was watching and admiring someone innocent as they mutated into a monster a form of love? 

Tom thought it was. 

Now though, Harry was less than enthusiastic, as he continued to prod at the meat, unimpressed with the redness or the way that it dripped a mixture of blood and sauce down onto the plate--a tangible reminder of all that he was, all that _any_ of them were. For people might pretend that they are above the animalistic tenancies of their ancestors, but everyone was an animal one way or another, and animals are just meat. 

In Tom, it was the savagery of his actions that made him an animal at heart; that beautiful brutality with which he executed every action, whether that was stabbing his fork through a thick slide of meat, or wrapping his hand around someone's throat and squeezing until they choked. The exact semantics of an action rarely mattered, not when it was the execution itself that was the true measure of the worth of a violation of morality.

In comparison, Harry was not born with a savagery in his core, burning him up day after day, rather his weakness lay in his own impulses. The recklessness that overtook his rational functioning in times of emotion. If confronted, Harry would deny the existence of such a thing, after all, such impulsiveness was unbecoming in the cool headed career of an Auror. 

But denying its existence did not make it disappear. 

Apparently realising that he was being watched, Harry raised his gaze up to Tom and held his eyes. He would rather starve than eat this. It was a sweet sentiment, but not one that would persuade Tom, and, whilst still holding Harry's burning eyes, he placed the square of meat into his mouth. 

Harry watched him chew; his gaze slipping to the sharp lines of Tom's jaw, and the curve of his throat, before dropping even lower to where the first two buttons of his shirt were undone. A carefully curated casualness that he knew would draw anyone's eye and maybe even make them salivate at the possibility of getting a taste. Hunger was just another form of love. 

Anyway, it would be pointless for Tom to deny that he didn't know what he looked like in this shirt; how the colour complemented his skintone and how it stretched over his shoulders. He knew what his face did to people. Just as he knew how _weak_ people were for just a taste of him, or perhaps for him to have a taste of them, and as much as he might wish it to be otherwise, Harry was not an exception to the rule. 

Just like everyone else, he stared; his eyes lingering at the contours and ridges and hollows for longer than necessary. Even now when he was pretending to be virtuous, Harry's gaze was tracing around Tom's mouth--he could feel it, hot and so very heavy on his skin. Harry Potter had weaknesses just like everybody else. 

Tom swallowed his food. "I thought you weren't hungry, Harry?" he said, as he began to cut another square of meat for his consumption. 

Harry shook his head, snapping out of the lull he'd, unintentionally, slid into.  
"I'm _not_ hungry," he said firmly, "not for this," he continued, raising his fork and prodding weakly at the meat and the mushrooms on his plate, as if to prove his lack of appetite by resisting them. 

"I wasn't talking about the food," Tom continued, taking another bite and repeating the motions of chewing, working his jawbone until it ached. As he ate, feeling the flesh break apart under his teeth and the blood slide over his tongue. He swallowed and licked his lips, leaving behind a red stain of saliva mixed with blood--it was the same flush colour as Harry's cheeks. 

"I'm not hungry," he repeated, quieter this time, averting his gaze to stare at his plate. 

"Are you sure, Harry?" Tom said, slow and soft, the syllables stretched tight over his tongue, "because from over here, you look as though you're starving." 

It was the truth. From this angle, Harry's long, lingering, looks could easily be compared to starving creatures approaching their first meal in days; there was that same yearning glaze coating his eyes, and the same firm set to his mouth. Tom watched as Harry put his fork down, placed across his plate, a steeliness coming over his features, even as his fingers began a nervous tapping against the tablecloth. 

He reached for his water and Tom continued to watch as he drank heavy gulps of water, before placing the glass back down where it had been. 

"What if I _was_ hungry?" Harry said carefully, his eyes coming to rest on Tom's again, though this time they contained a challenge--a dare--to answer him, and to take their casual conversations to yet another level of indecency. 

Tom smiled and placed his own fork down, the points hanging over the edge of the plate and the piece of meat still attached dripping onto the tablecloth. "Then," he said, "I would lay out the menu for you." 

"Am I on it?" Harry said quickly, his eyes flashing with what an untrained observer might have thought was anger, but judging by the way he clenched his hand and ran the tip of his tongue over his lip, was more likely to be the first blooms of arousal settling low in his stomach. 

He was easy to read like that.

"Oh, Harry," Tom said with a smile as he leaned forward to take up his own glass of water. Pressing it to his mouth and swallowing, his lips lingering on the rim for far longer than necessary, but he liked the way Harry stared with his mouth open, mesmerised. "You're the cynosure." 

"You're sick." 

The words rang out, quick and deft, before staying there, just hanging in the air for anyone to hear, but there wasn't anyone but them around to listen in on the most private desires of human beings--the ones that stretched comprehensions of love right to the very limit, blurring them with hate and violence and a sophisticated brutality that was almost as unattainable as it was reprehensible. 

_Almost._

It was just love, wasn't it? Tom had always thought so, though now the steady lines that used to demarcate love so clearly, had grown wild, and even if both of them would never admit it, neither knew if this was actually love anymore.

Or whether it had mutated into something so perversely _wrong_ that no person could ever call it love. 

But either way, Tom soaked up that moment of silence, revelling in the sickness and the disgust of normal people--those who were too afraid to embrace what lay under their skin--before leaning forward, his right arm outstretched on the table. 

"You think I don't _know_ that, Harry?" he said, watching the micromovements in Harry's face that always gave him away. "It's the difference between us, you see, I _admit_ what I am, while you sit there and pretend that there's nothing writhing under your skin."

Harry swallowed, and shifted in his seat, his hand continuing to clench as the impulses began to rise inside him. Behind his features, Tom could see the flickering of frustration; he could feel it too in the texture of Harry's magic chafing on his neck and wrists, rubbing them raw. 

"I know there is," Tom continued, "because I've seen you when no one else has..." he paused, merely for dramatics, but it was enough to hear Harry's breath hitch, and to watch his knuckles crack, and to feel his magic swell with want. "... And I _know_ just how turned on you get at the thought of being eaten by me." 

Harry continued to hold his gaze, but his thoughts were drifting like they always did; falling again and again into that fantasy that was as perverse as it was gorgeous. The one that had him staring at Tom's teeth, and at his tongue, and at his lips, and pretending that _he_ was the monster for being willing to test the true limits of love. 

"You really want me to, don't you?" Tom continued, curling his fingers around his glass as though it was Harry's throat, stroking up the column with his thumb, until Harry was pulling at his collar and undoing the topmost button with neither finesse nor dexterity. 

"You want me to get a piece of you on my fork, and put you between my teeth," Tom said, liking flush that formed thick over Harry's cheeks and spilt down his neck. "You want me to chew you up; to taste you all over my tongue and then to swallow you." 

Tom paused to swallow, "you want to be so deep inside me, that I can't ever get you out."

He swallowed again, harder now, and continued to watch as Harry shifted again, his feet pushed flat against the floor in an attempt to ground himself, and his fingers digging into the wood of the table; it must have hurt to have himself stripped so bare, to have the horrors of his heart ripped open for anyone to see. Not that Tom would let them. Knowledge was, after all, power, and this was the most _intimate_ knowledge of all. 

Just knowing it made Tom's palms itch and a static start to buzz inside his chest; this throbbing that aligned his heart and his pulse and his head to one, singular, rhythm. It was easy to get drunk with power and mad with a love that felt like sickness. 

" _You_ want to watch yourself be eaten by me, don't you, Harry?" he said, smiling at the small, needy, sound of agreement that Harry made in the back of his throat. "Well," he continued, "I'll give you what you want, but only if you say how much you _adore_ me first." As he spoke, Tom leaned back and raised his fork again, taking the square of meat still impaled and placing it on his tongue. He chewed. He swallowed. He smiled. 

"So, Harry, will I be getting a taste of you?"


End file.
